The reporting center will train graduate students through investigative journalism projects focused on high-impact, national issues. The first cohort at ASU's Howard Center for Investigative Journalism will begin in fall 2019.

"I'm so honored to have been chosen and so excited to work with these amazing journalists at the innovative and distinguished Cronkite School," Beelman said in a statement. "I've had the good fortune to do many wonderful things in my career, but being offered the chance to help shape the future of investigative reporting is more than I could have hoped for."

Beelman will join ASU next month to help design the center and courses for the university's new master's degree in investigative journalism. ASU will be the first university in the country to offer such a degree.

At AP, Beelman led a multi-platform team of national investigative reporters. She recently edited stories on sexual assaults among U.S. military dependents and regulation of medical devices.

Beelman also was the founding director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the first global network of investigative reporters. She built and supervised a network of more than 90 journalists in 45 countries.

What is the Howard Center?

The Scripps-Howard Foundation — the philanthropic arm of media giant E.W. Scripps Company — offered grants to ASU and the University of Maryland earlier this year to establish investigative reporting centers. The centers will be named after Roy W. Howard, former chairman of the corporation.

Christopher Callahan, dean of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.(Photo: Tom Tingle/The Republic)

The Scripps-Howard foundation invited 13 universities to apply for the investigative journalism funding, and ASU and the University of Maryland "rose to the top" during the rigorous review process, according to Scripps-Howard Foundation President and CEO Liz Carter

Christopher Callahan, dean of the ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, told The Arizona Republic earlier this year that the Cronkite School plans to attract students from other majors and young adults from other industries to broaden the scope of investigative reporting.

The program will work as a "teaching hospital," where students will be a part of a working newsroom and produce investigative journalism with national impact, Callahan said.

"It's going to first create this whole new generation of great investigative journalists (while) at the same time producing great investigative journalism for the whole nation," he said.

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